Noncompete
The short version: A customer of a service has the responsibility to provide feedback to the service provider, so they can improve their service. I you stop using a service, without providing feedback, and without waiting on a response, you are telling them they do not need to improve. A customer like Google or Facebook has a lot of influence, in regard to that. Providing the excellent service you demand, to yourself, only helps you, and the rest of us lose. Additionally, providing excellent service to yourself requires that you learn everything the service provider has already learned about providing said services. Doing it on your own means you have to learn all of that, and waste research and development time and money to get there. In order to hasten the process, you may hire talent from the service provider, contributing to "Brain Drain." Those are a concern, because they generally result in slower innovation. There is no real antithesis to competition, because competition is inherently needed and good for humanity. To not compete is to lay down development and give up. To not compete is to remove yourself from the market of competition, and deprive your competitors of a worthy opponent. Many dictionaries insinuate that the antithesis of competition is cooperation, but that is demonstrably untrue. When you sign a non-compete with an employer, you are telling them you're not going to fight for a better job, and force your employer to improve their game. You're giving up your ability to compete in the open market of employment, and your talents are unavailable to other employers. Doesn't seem very sporting, does it? Older 'essays' have been removed. They are saved in the history of this article, for reference and adding stuff in a more Wiki style. =Examples= Data Centers Large companies often get into the data center market because they are concerned about privacy and IP, availability and assurance of resources like clean power, low latency bandwidth, efficient cooling technology and the like. When companies decide to build a data center, they need to learn how to locate an optimal location, find people to excavate, find people to build, find people to staff, find service providers to provide services, find cooling solutions, and more. When there already exists an open market of data center providers, it seems like wasted energy, effort and resources to do it yourself. Perhaps it looks cheaper on paper, somehow. Google, for example, could use Equinix for data centers, and then they would be able to provide feedback to Equinix, to make them improve their game. Since Equinix is just one option to others, in the market, the competitors will also be forced to innovate and compete, to keep their costs lower and encourage Facebook to use them. Data center providers also provide background-checked and verified security staff, another chore Google wouldn't need to worry about handling themselves. The equipment in the data centers themselves could also be managed by employer agnostic technicians, allowing for a lot of curious people without system-level management skills to enter the field. Restaurants near Google Campus There are none. Perhaps because they are against the ordinances or laws, in business parks. But if Google serves food to its employees, how is that different? Google could have instead asked the local municipalities to change the law, which would help everyone. Serving food for your employees, and your employees only means that anyone else in your business park also has to provide food for their employees, increasing the burden on smaller businesses and potential Google competitors. It is possible that public access may be provided to Google's Cafes, I am unsure. Additionally, Google provides a high standard of food to its employees. That means it has private chefs whose talents are squandered inside Google, and not available on the open market. Coffee Shops This is a minor example, but nonetheless demonstrably true. When your employer provides you with all sorts of coffee options, you have no motivation or need to go to the coffee shops near your office, that produce a much tastier cup of joe. The impact may be minimal, but it's there, I spoke to many people who never ventured out of the office, because it was free to have coffee in house. They also robbed themselves of the opportunity to get outside for some fresh air, and take some time away from their monitors, to let their brains think. Kindle and other ereaders The latest Kindle is apparently going to finally have a backlight. Awesome, my Kindle I bought this past March is now obsolescent. That's ok, I still find great use in it. Why is this a problem? If the first generation Kindle had had a backlight (go ahead, try to convince me there was a good reason not to), the Kindle would have been adopted by MANY more people. More people would be reading ebooks and the prices of ebooks would be lower. Additionally, new products, like the Apple iPad would have been less 'impressive' and wouldn't have stolen nearly as much of the market from Amazon that it did. Why? Just because Amazon wanted to milk its consumers, and trickle 'advancements' to us? Gee, thanks.